Agriculture

From the UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, where I’m not sure they have seen this graph: Now, if only Africa could solve its political problems, get reliable energy, and reliable roads for transport…and they’d have the kind of success we enjoy in the United States. UPDATE: Fred Berple notes in comments: Maize production: Malawi – 1961 815000 tons…

From the “what took them so long” department…. Could global warming’s top culprit help crops? Study looks at how carbon dioxide might cut effects of rising heat From THE EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Many scientists fear that global warming will hit staple food crops hard, with heat stress, extreme weather events and water shortages.…

NASA study finds climate change shifting wine grape harvests in France and Switzerland- higher-quality wines are typically associated with earlier harvest dates From NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER A new study from NASA and Harvard University finds that climate change is diminishing an important link between droughts and the timing of wine grape harvests in France and…

Guest essay by Eric Worrall The humble potato is apparently so adaptable to different climatic conditions, NASA scientists are conducting serious tests, to see if the hardiest varieties could grow on the planet Mars. My question – what does this radical adaptability say about climatic food resilience, back here on Earth? Echoing Ridley Scott’s The…

From the “science moves faster than climate change department” and the American Society for Horticultural Science comes this leafy nightmare sure to make greens go into a tizzy, because according to Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich, we are all supposed to be starving by now and dead soon from climate change and other things, requiring necrotism aka Soylent…

Recently, there was the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media over the threat of “climate change” as outlined in Ramankutty et al. published on January 6th, in Nature and touted by press release. An excerpt from that press release reads: At a time when global warming is projected to produce more extreme weather,…

Humus depletion induced by climate change? Stagnating crop yields pose a threat to soil From the TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH (TUM) The yields of many important crops in Europe have been stagnating since the 1990s. As a result, the input of organic matter into the soil – the crucial source for humus formation – is…